Patience is not something I have ever found to be very comforting. Growing up, I related to patience as some may relate to anxiety. If I wasn’t doing things fast, I might as well not be doing them at all.
In college is when I first leaned into the idea of speed. When walking between classes, I used to cut corners on every sidewalk so that I could get to my destination as fast as possible. Speed was my greatest ally, and it was a tangible thing I could feel, control, and manipulate. But with experience, I came to a different understanding of what patience meant, required, and embodied.
Patience, to me, has come to mean something akin to contentment and stoicism. Having the ability to forgo the immediate satisfaction of “making it” or reaping the wealthful abundance of “success” is what patience means to me now. Patience is watching an oak tree grow and rest through the cyclical seasons of fall, winter, spring, and summer. Patience knows that the storm ahead is what tempers the character. Patience is peaceful.
While I believe in this newfound definition, I have an ever-hard time abiding by the principle I believe patience to be: peaceful acceptance of the hardship before me.
Startups are my passion. For a brain that is consistently imagining, it is my outlet. It’s an objective way to test my innermost thoughts and ideas. It forces self-exposure and asks the question: is this excessive hubris embodied or an idea to solve a real problem? Do I want to birth this baby so others can be proud of what I have created, or does this child have the destiny to aid in a certain cosmic issue? Most of them end up in the former category.
3 years ago, the pandemic was raging in the minds of most. One particular night I found myself gazing up at the moon through the second-story window of my in-laws’ living room. Leaning back against the large sofa in one hand, I was grasping a blanket cloaked across my back. My other was arm-deep in a family-sized box of Cheerios, transporting cereal as consistently as a conveyor to my face hole. I started a new company, Kinetik Sourcing Inc, in response to the pandemic, and I was to the edge of a long rope.
I had taken some $50,000 from a couple of clients a few days before. This was the largest sum of money I had ever taken at one time. My service was promising the timely delivery of many thousands of units of medical equipment. A few hours before, I became aware that my clients’ scheduled shipments had all left the ports of China but were split apart across several countries in Europe and Central America. The shipments were supposed to deliver directly to the port of New York on a single plane and then transported by truck to my clients. Our courier partner had just purchased several new 747 jets to adjust to the rising demand. It was supposed to be a quick and easy logistical flow that would be complete in a few days. Quickly this turned into a weekly battle with the customs and border patrol of several countries.
To make a long story short, we had to switch freight forwarding partners 3 times in 2 weeks. We made many quick decisions on the fly but eventually delivered all the goods to their intended destinations. I felt like each day I was in a pressure cooker. Clients were counting on me, and most importantly in my mind, I had an obligation to deliver those goods since I took the money.
Sitting on the couch that night with cheerio’s in hand, I had no idea how it was going to work out. I had pulled every string. I worked fixers from China to the USA, and I was striking out and burnt out. It wasn’t until I hit that breaking point that I realized I had no more control. All I wanted was to control this out-of-control situation, but I couldn’t talk, force, coerce or even beg my way to a place that would give me peace.
It took me several months to finally look back on this experience and begin to understand what patience was and how it could bring me peace in stressful times.
When I first chose the lifestyle of entrepreneurship in college, it started as an idealist religion of “control”. I said I used to cut all the corners of the sidewalks to get to my destination as quickly as possible, but what if while crossing the sidewalk, I was hit by a car, breaking my legs? What if my client’s shipments were lost in various countries? Could I muster the willpower to crawl to my next class? Could I obsess and over-stress myself to sickness, worrying about the what-ifs? Yes to both, but I would have missed out on the opportunity to let someone help. I would’ve missed out on the peace of knowing that it was out of my control, and that’s ok. Perhaps I would have found patience and learned to fixate on things I could control.
Whether it be my mental health, my physical health, my spiritual health or my business health, I know one thing is true: patience is the peaceful acceptance of the hardship ever before me.
For my mental health, I make sure I talk to counselors who help me understand self-awareness. For physical health, I make sure to exercise 6 days a week and rest on the 7th. For my spiritual health, I make sure to talk to God about others more than myself. For my business, I do all of the above.
We can all do it; we can all be patient in our journey.
